Androids can purchase with just one click

A new app lets Android users check out in one click at many merchants.

The Single-Click Checkout app pops up over a merchant’s commerce-enabled Android app.

Now that hundreds of merchants have mobile sites and apps up and running, many are moving on to phase two: making the process of buying through a mobile device quick and easy. Mobile payment vendor Billing Revolution will next month launch an app for smartphones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system that is designed to do just that.

The app, called Single-Click Checkout, lets consumers check out in one click at participating merchants. This means consumers do not have to enter payment information, user names or passwords when they checkout on the m-commerce sites or mobile apps of merchants using the service, Billing Revolution says.

Here’s how it works: When a shopper clicks ‘pay’ in a merchant’s commerce-enabled Android app that uses Single-Click Checkout, the service will check to see if the user has downloaded the Single-Click Checkout app on her device. If she has the app, it pops up over the top of the merchant’s app or site and the user enters her credit card information once and is then able to checkout at all Android shopping apps using the Single-Click service with one click.

If the shopper has not downloaded the Single-Click Checkout Android app on her smartphone, the service automatically launches the shopper’s mobile web browser. From there, she can either download the Single-Click Android app or checkout at the merchants’ mobile web site, after which her information will be saved and she will be able to check out with one click at any m-commerce site using the Single-Click system.

“If the user elects to complete the transaction on the mobile web, they are single-click enabled in the mobile web thereafter,” says Andy Kleitsch, CEO of Billing Revolution. “We never require the user to visit a web site after that to set-up an account or create a username and password. We always enable the user to complete the transaction ‘in the moment’ on the device.”

To add Single-Click Checkout, merchants drop a few lines of code into their Android mobile app or their mobile web site, Kleitsch says. The code uniquely identifies each mobile device; once the device ID is established, users can pay via a credit or debit card in one click without entering any additional information.

Kleitsch says Single-Click Checkout gathers the minimum amount of data necessary to conduct a transaction. For digital goods, he says that usually means credit card and expiration date. If a merchant requests a shipping address, Billing Revolution requests that from the user as necessary and enables the shopper to pass that information on to other merchants using the Single-Click system.

The feature can accept mobile payments in 150 currencies, the vendor says. Billing Revolution charges a per-transaction fee of around 10 cents for the service. Single-Click Checkout will be available for Android on November 8 and the vendor plans to announce merchant partnerships in early November.

“Many merchants have delayed entering the Android marketplace because of the challenges of monetizing those users,” Kleitsch says. “Our transaction history shows that when presented with an easy checkout solution, mobile users are likely to purchase more often. So we’re giving merchants, developers and Android users a ubiquitous solution for conducting mobile-based credit card transactions from a single user account.”